Hybrid View

Stiletto 2: Learning to hate

I've had a Stiletto 2 for over a year and I have to say I've become disappointed with what I though was a decent device.

I'm a Howard Stern fan but I live on the west coast. Naturally, I set up my radio to record the live show when it starts at 3am. When I get to work, it all recorded and I can listen throughout the day. It's pretty great.

The problem I'm having is the radio doesn't always record! It seems to be related to removing and replacing it in the dock. If I take it in and put it back, it fails to record the next show! I have to 'reset and erase' to get it to start recording again. NOW, it spontaneously erases the program, while I'm listening to it! WTF!? I have no idea if it's dock related but if I don't touch it, it seems to work. The spontaneous deletion is a new thing. It just started doing it last week. I was in the first hour of the show and it disappeared forever.

I'm seriously ready to smash this thing, but I paid $300+ for it. For that price this thing should be flawless. It's a shame. Sirius is no help with this problem, as you can imagine, since my radio is now old.

I can't really offer you any help w/ the Stiletto. however I do have a XMP3, and it has some of the same issues, I can only record and listen to the play back, and after this, I have to 'reset and erase' if I try to record something on top of the old recording, it will erase it, I think it's because the card inside only has a 1GB capability, I'm not sure if getting a memory card would even help w/ this problem, if just may

Thanks for the suggestion! I have a memory card and I have my recording set to only keep the last recording. This has no effect. It works fine until I remove it from the dock and then replace it later... it just completely fails to record anything and then erases all previous recordings. It's definitely a bug of some kind and, as usual, Sirius has done absolutely nothing to address this issue since I brought it to their attention.

Solution

I have had every "stiletto" product since the very first one. They have ALWAYS been buggy, and I have gone through several units (after the first one broke, I always bought them through circuit city with the warranty).

This particular unit (SL2) is the most stable of them all, but still has problems. Once anything buggy happens you have to reset it.

There are several ways to get it from not messing up, but I will give you a few which you may be missing.

1. Never pause a recorded program, then leave it, and dock it. In other words, keep the recorded program running, then select back, select satellite, and go to any station (usually howard) then dock it. If a recording is paused, then a new recording starts, it will screw up the works.

2. ALWAYS dock your unit if you have a scheduled recording. Amazingly enough, the SL2 gets very upset if a scheduled recording happens, and it isn't docked. If you can't assure you will be home when your scehduled program starts, don't schedule it.

3. Do the M-F schedule for howard, thats all you need, and lets you keep it undocked over the weekends.

4. Only keep the shows you need. I listen religiously, so only need to preserve the last 5 shows.

5. Never undock while it is recording. If you are in the car, change to a separate channel, and it will ask if you want to keep partial and change channel. Same for home dock, never remove while recording and turn off, just change channel, and respond to its request to save partial and change channel.

I assume you already know that if anything messes up, you have to reset and erase, it just is what it is. Luckily you no longer have to "resend activation signal" which was a pain.

Hope this helps.

I was hear searching for the new stiletto, since the SL2 is being discontinued. Mine just borked (was constantly freezing and restarting, and now its kaputz).

That is helpful info, I have figured out some of these issues throught trial & error myself. I tried the the memory card thing and it does nothing except allow you to put alot more mp3 files onto your unit. I am ready to give up on the SL2 and go back to a sportster. I sure did love it when it works.